About a half hour ago, a group of eighth graders from my school left on their class trip. They were my second sixth grade class. Next year, they will be cruising the halls of the high school, thinking about "what they want to do with their lives" and longing to apply for driving permits.
Where does all the time go?
As I reflect back on almost twenty years in education (I started subbing the 1990-1991 school year... at the high school from which I had just graduated...), I think about all of the faces I have seen, all of the laughter I have heard. I've wiped away a tear or two--theirs as well as mine.
I came to education the hard way, learning the ropes as I went, an aid in many classrooms. I watched truly inspiring teaching, moderately mediocre teaching, and downright awful teaching. I learned how to relate to kids, often by doing it the wrong way, sometimes by stumbling across the True Path.
I imagine a bizarre cross between This is Your Life, A Christmas Carol, and Dante's Commedia, a phantasmal string of young people gathered facing me. How many of them are smiling?
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